Friday, August 05, 2011

I love Reason Magazine. I dont' agree with everybody in it all the time (and if I did, I should worry a bit). But I was out on their site today and made the mistake of commenting and mentioning I was a "conservative".

I noted that if you have a general Jeffersonian philosophy at all, you're considered a conservative, and I got tired of fighting it. We're really Classical Liberals, but it's too confusing to too many people. So I just go with it. I accept "conservative" if it means conserving classical liberal values and respecting the culture that established them in Republican form. I'll wear that mantle.

I guess I just momentarily forgot why I stopped hanging out with "L" Libertarians. Same reason I never hung out at the Zen Center in my Zen Buddhist days. Bunch of juvenile narcissists looking for validation from other juvenile narcissists.

I have long noted that the comments on their web articles appear to be from adolescents who are obsessed with genitalia "jokes". One said they come to Reason Magazine to get away from Conservatives and Liberals because, I believe, they said that "they were the ones that f*cked everything up."

I'm sure they did, while y'all sat around and told jokes about Sarah Palin's t*ts.

Not that I don't like them, don't get me wrong ;-)

At any rate, it occurred to me this evening that there are Libertarians out there, whom, if you don't agree that everyone should be free to schtup his sister in public and have the pictures published on the front page of the local newspaper, well you're no good to them. And twice as no good if you wouldn't approve of it if it were his brother rather than his sister.

The comment I got went something like "one look at your blog and I can tell you're a conservative". Another went "Blogs 4 Palin. Go Away".

So I said "Ok". No problem. The print edition doesn't suffer from the incessant t*tty and d*ck banter that passes as discourse in the online comments.

Clearly they'd read a post or two and had done an in-depth analysis of just how exactly my opinions differed from theirs. I frankly doubt they even read most Reason columns if they don't have something to do with pot or sex.

So I've decided to add a corollary to my observation.

If you have a general Jeffersonian philosophy at all, you're considered a conservative, and I got tired of fighting it, so I just go with it. It does a fairly decent job in helping to identify assholes as well.

7 comments:

Yes, I think so. Maybe you can't judge a book by its cover, but you can judge dogmatists by their book covers -- anyone waving around a copy of Atlas Shrugged in public is guaranteed to be a douchebag, just as anyone waving around a copy of The Catcher in the Rye is proclaiming to all the world that he's an insufferable juvenile narcissist. And didja ever notice that in all three cases, their idea of "not buying into your soul-killing corporate thing and selling out to The Man, man" is just sitting around and smoking pot in their parents' basement?

I will take "L" Libertarians (and "anarchists," and "anti-globalization activists") seriously when they acknowledge that "weed, man! Weeeeeed!!" is not a coherent political philosophy.

Don't get me wrong. There is a lot to like about Ron. But he is right there on the edge of tinfoil hat country, and most of his fervent supporters, it seems, have closets full of those hats.

Ayn Rand definitely layed out why (government enforced) collectivism is wrong and the merits of respecting the inherent rights of individuals. In really, really hard to read books (though Anthem wasn't a bad read and probably got the point across just as well ... or one could argue BETTER because you can actually READ it).

That's the thing about the lunatic fringe: they generally don't know they're lunatic OR fringe. They really do think the aliens are reading their brainwaves.

Paulbots know it.

I see this in the education biz a lot. For whatever reason (mostly insecurity, I'm guessing), some folks just want to be seen as radicals; the stuff to be radical about is just an afterthought. Academe is already pretty far left --Obama's a "neoconservative" in the circles I run in -- so if you want to be a "radical," you have to proclaim yourself an out-and-proud Maoist or something.

Paultards are like that. They know that "going Galt" wouldn't work any more than the Great Leap Forward did, but they don't care, because that's not the point. They just want to be the most radical right-wingers who aren't the Klan.

It's so bizarre. And grossly unfair too, of course, since Maoists are merely "passionate" while our lunatics are "the American Taliban"... but whatever. At least the Ronulans do us the immense favor of wearing their hearts on their sleeves, so you can generally avoid all contact with them with very little effort.

[a note on Rand - Ayn, not Paul. I'm not really anti-Any Rand; in fact, like you I'm rather small-L libertarian. I'm more "anti- the people who can't shut up about how much they love Ayn Rand." Dude: I get it. I just don't care. Coming off like Jehovah's Witnesses isn't helping your cause, amigos].